


Alone, I cannot be

by middlemarch



Category: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Gen, Jedi Training, Post-Canon, Training, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 05:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13047249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Incomplete, her training was. It would not remain so.





	Alone, I cannot be

“I heard what you did,” Rey said without a preamble. Preambles did not suit her and she found General Organa, Leia as she insisted on being called after the last battle, was not inclined towards them either; for a monarch, she had a shocking lack of interest in propriety and deference, at least Rey had heard it said. She had no context for monarchs or generals, so she called the dark-eyed woman Leia and wondered how long it had been since she had been called mother. 

“Yes,” Leia replied, setting aside the data-padd and shifting so the drapery of her mantle bared her right arm. No one had said, but Rey was sure that was the one that had guided her, through space and its chill death, back to life—back to the locked doors Leia had beaten on to be admitted. It looked no different than the left, except the rings were different and there was no electrum cuff chased with symbols Rey couldn’t decode. 

“I want you to teach me. I want you to be my master, my Jedi master—since Master Skywalker is gone,” Rey said, stumbling a little as she remembered how Skywalker had been Leia’s twin. Rey had never known a sibling and she was unsure what the loss meant. She had lost Ben but what he was to her—brother, lover, opponent, destroyer, she hadn’t been able to parse. Finn had wanted to weigh in, she’d seen it in his eyes, but he’d stopped when Poe shook his head. She felt their powers jangling through the Force and then Rose had huffed and BB-8 chirped and the collecting maelstrom dissipated. Leia was looking at her and she saw Ben’s eyes in his mother’s gaze and something infinitely older. Something unique, the last Alderaanian and what that rarity entailed. 

“I can’t,” Leia said. She didn’t smile or raise an eyebrow but it was not a dismissal.

“You won’t,” Rey challenged. That was part of the legend, how Leia had refused to train as a Jedi, how reluctantly she had given her son to her brother’s tutelage. Her regrets were not part of the legend but Rey felt them nevertheless. They were shadows and they were monsters in the depths, they were raptors devouring the empty air.

“I cannot. I am not a Jedi. There are none left,” Leia replied. 

“I know what you did, what you can do,” Rey reiterated. “I need to learn what I can do, I need to be taught. For myself—and the rest of us. I saw myself, mirrored, I saw there are…capabilities, dangerous ones, temptations. Possibilities I don’t want to lose.”

“You saw more than anyone else did. Luke saw himself once and Ben looked and never saw. He looked away,” Leia said. “Still, I cannot be your master,” she went on but now she smiled. 

“Why not?”

“Because that is not for us, Rey. You are not my padawan and I will not wear a cowl. They’ve never suited me,” she said, the laughter in the tone, the way scent was in the breeze across the sand. “We—we’re something else, you and I. Two students, two masters, equals.”

“Equals?” Rey exclaimed.

“Who has done what you have done? No one. Who has done what I have? No one. Who else is left? We don’t know—the galaxy is wide. The era of the Jedi is over. We’ll discover what we are—together,” Leia said. It was as if she had been waiting to say it and was surprised, all at once. She reached out her hand and Rey took it; there was power there and something else, something that tempered it but did not lessen. Rey felt how light the stones had been as she raised them and how she had been drawn to Finn. She suddenly knew how cold space was around the stars.

“You knew I’d ask,” Rey said slowly.

“You knew I’d answer. I’ve been alone a long time. I’d like not to be,” Leia said, sounding young, familiar. Rey took the ring from her third finger without asking, without being told. It fit, the jewels gleaming, cabochons of deepest red, the gold warm, heavy. Right.

“Maz will know,” Rey said. Heard herself saying.

“Maz?” Now Leia was the one who asked a question, the student. The peerless peer.

“Maz will know what we are called.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted super women training each other and making a better world than the Jedi managed with all their nonsense. What if they didn't rely on light-sabers? What if they re-write those old books?
> 
> I don't expect this story to get as much attention as my others, since the primary relationship is not shippy at all. That's fine. Still wanted to write it.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


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